Page 59 of Spiced!

It was utterly adorable.

“It was a good night,” I whispered.

He made the quieter sound again.

“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”

I poured my first cup as it came through the strainer. This was the impatient pour, the one I’d been doing since I was nineteen while the world was still dark and the bread needed me before anyone else did. I drank the juice of life standing at the counter with Puck beside me and Gerald holding down the windowsill. Outside, the sun was still resisting leaving the comfort of her covers.

I was most of the way through my second cup when I heard the distinct sounds of someone navigating a familiar space while only partially conscious. Brendan’s slow footsteps were barely audible. There was a small pause, then more slow footsteps. I knew that shuffle. I had made it myself many times in the early hours when my brain hadn’t fully committed to being awake yet, when my body was running on muscle memory alone.

Brendan appeared in the kitchen doorway, eyes squinty and hair, well, doing that finger-in-the-light-socket thing.

Ay, ese hombre, I thought.

His hair had not improved. It had, if anything, expanded its range of opinions during the time I’d been up. The section I’d admired in the dark was now doing something new, still sideways, with the confidence of something that had made a decision and wasn’t taking questions—or of the final surrender of a dead squirrel.

He’d donned a worn T-shirt and silky shorts. Squinting against the kitchen light, his face appeared to believe it was still in bed. He looked nothing like the composed, steady man who’d grilled chicken thighs on a balcony and listened to me talk about bread lamination like it was the most interesting thing he’d heard all week.

He looked better, actually.

He looked real.

His eyes found me, then the coffee maker, then me again.

“You made coffee,” he said, his voice lower than usual, roughed up by sleep. The sound of it did something to the bottom of my gut that I was going to need to think about later when I had time.

“Your system is logical,” I said. “Filters above, coffee beside.”

He looked at the cabinets, then at me again. “You figured out my system.”

“It took about four seconds.”

He padded into the kitchen, moving with the unhurried shuffle of a man whose body was present and whose brain was on its way, and reached past me for a mug. He was close enough that his shoulder pressed briefly against mine, and he didn’t move away. He then poured his coffee, leaned on the counter beside me, and looked at Gerald the way I imagined he looked at Gerald every morning, checking on him, confirming he was fine, giving him the quiet acknowledgment of something that had been there a long time and was trusted to continue.

“How long have you been up?” he said.

“Since four.”

He looked at me. “It’s four twenty-three.”

“I made productive use of time.”

“You talked to Puck?”

“Puck and I had a conversation, yes.”

Puck dook’d from the counter, confirming this.

Brendan looked at him with the fondness of a man who had long ago accepted that his ferret participated in household discussions.

Then he took a long sip and sighed deeply, his eyes closing briefly.

“What?” he asked as he focused on me.

“Nothing.”

“You’re looking at my hair,” he said. One hand reached up and tried, very unsuccessfully, to push some of his mess back into place.